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LEDinside on OLED/LED Competition for the Lighting MarketMarch 05, 2018

LEDinside, which tends to be a mouthpiece for the LED industry explored competition between OLED and LED technology and concluded that the high costs of OLED technology make it very difficult to raise the penetration rate of OLED products, but with the efforts of major manufacturers such as OSRAM and LG, as well as Chinese manufacturers' large sum of investment in OLED display sector, OLED lighting is growing rapidly thanks to the R&D experience and manufacturing equipment from the display industry. Coupled with the public’s increasing awareness of environmental protection, consumers now have higher aesthetic requirements of lighting that combines life and art, so white OLED lighting is likely to become the star of next generation lighting.

The conclude that automotive lighting is the most promising and most mature application for OLED lighting. With the latest integration of LED technology, lighting has become a significant feature of cars with potential value rather than a basic function of vehicles, and OLEDs have the real potential to be differentiated from LEDs. They cite the BMW M4 GTS, introduced in 2016, as the first commercial vehicle to incorporate OLED technology in taillights. Apart from automotive market, OLED lighting manufacturers are exploring sectors of traditional lighting such as commercial lighting and workplace lighting. In addition, OLED technology is targeting several niche markets, including medical lighting and embedded lighting, in order to realize economies of scale and to reduce costs. According to LEDinside, the size of global OLED lighting panel market has reached about US$153 million in 2017. China’s OLED display industry is estimated to see production capacity expansion in 2018, substantially improving the yield rate in OLED industry and lowering the costs. OLED lighting will also have chance to improve the performance-cost ratio due to the entire market’s status quo. Hence, the size of OLED lighting market is expected to reach more than 1.1 billion by 2020. LEDinside seems to ignore the efforts of LG and their gen 5 fab in projecting future revenue. Also, having just returned from China, there doesn’t seem to be much investing going on in OLED lighting from either Yeolight of First O-Light.

OSRAMOSRAM announced the closure of its soluble PMOLED OLED display factory in Malaysia in July 2007, shifting its focus to OLED lighting applications. In the past 10 years, OSRAM not only released OLED lamps, but also became the industry pioneer of automotive OLED lighting. Companies, including BMW and Audi, released cars embedding OLED lighting in taillights during 2015 and 2016, and many of the OLED lighting components are supplied by OSRAM.

LGDLGD continued to deploy in OLED segment in 2017 and initiated large-scale investment in the field of display. At the same time, LGD also actively approached BMW regarding the sales of OLED lighting products. It is reported that LGD will supply products including taillights and interior lighting components to BMW. In addition, LGD also unveiled its new OLED brand Luflex at the end of 2017 and announced that Luflex will sell its OLED lighting products in the future with automotive application as its top priority, followed by commercial lighting and lighting manufacturers. As for the future, LGD aims to be the largest OLED lighting brand worldwide with its Gen 5 fab.